d," would be the better expression. In the cast
of the tomb of Queen Eleanor, for a single instance, the Gothic foliage,
of which one essential virtue is its change over every shield, is
represented by a repetition of casts from one mold, of which the design
itself is entirely conjectural.

LECTURE III.

IMAGINATION.

_November, 1870._

66. The principal object of the preceding Lecture, (and I choose rather
to incur your blame for tediousness in repeating, than for obscurity in
defining it,) was to enforce the distinction between the ignoble and
false phase of Idolatry, which consists in the attribution of a
spiritual power to a material thing; and the noble and truth-seeking
phase of it, to which I shall in these Lectures[16] give the general
term of Imagination;--that is to say, the invention of material symbols
which may lead us to contemplate the character and nature of gods,
spirits, or abstract virtues and powers, without in the least implying
the actual presence of such Beings among us, or even their possession,
in reality, of the forms we attribute to them.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.]

67. For instance, in the ordinarily received Greek type of Athena, on
vases of the Phidian time, (sufficiently represented in the following
wood-cut,) no Greek would have supposed the vase on which this was
painted to be itself Athena, nor to contain Athena inside of it, as the
Arabian fisherman's casket contained the genie; neither did he think
that this rude black painting, done at speed as the potter's fancy urged
his hand, represented anything like the form or aspect of the goddess
herself. Nor would he have thought so, even had the image been ever so
beautifully wrought. The goddess might, indeed, visibly appear under the
form of an armed virgin, as she might under that of a hawk or a swallow,
when it pleased her to give such manifestation of her presence; but it
did not, therefore, follow that she was constantly invested with any of
these forms, or that the best which human skill could, even by her own
aid, picture of her, was, indeed, a likeness of her. The real use, at
all events, of this rude image, was only to signify to the eye and heart
the facts of the existence, in some manner, of a Spirit of wisdom,
perfect in gentleness, irresistible in anger; having also physical
dominion over the air which is the life and breath of all creatures, and
clothed, to human eyes, with aegis of fiery cloud, and raiment of fa